Missing heritability: is the gap closing? An analysis of 32 complex traits in the Lifelines Cohort Study.

ABSTRACT: Despite the recent explosive rise in number of genetic markers for complex disease traits identified in genome-wide association studies, there is still a large gap between the known heritability of these traits and the part explained by these markers. To gauge whether this 'heritability gap' is closing, we first identified genome-wide significant SNPs from the literature and performed replication analyses for 32 highly relevant traits from five broad disease areas in 13 436 subjects of the Lifelines Cohort. Next, we calculated the variance explained by multi-SNP genetic risk scores (GRSs) for each trait, and compared it to their broad- and narrow-sense heritabilities captured by all common SNPs. The majority of all previously-associated SNPs (median=75%) were significantly associated with

SUBMITTER: Nolte IM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5520063 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature